


this charming man

by hejustlikeshoney



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (TV 2016)
Genre: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, i'm just going to let this speak for itself, mainly because i'm too lazy to give it any real tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 21:17:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15671454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hejustlikeshoney/pseuds/hejustlikeshoney
Summary: he knows so much about these things.





	this charming man

**Author's Note:**

> ;)

The soldiers arrive in the autumn of 1808. The air is cool that year, the wind rustling through the leaves of the old oak in front of the tiny house. The girl sets off down the street, taking care to close the gate behind her. Its rotting wood and rusting hinges creak with age, causing her to shake her head in dismay. Everything in their village is old, from the church cemetery on one end to the farm on the other. Only the people keep it young.

She pulls her shawl tighter over her thin shoulders as she approaches the town, not fearful, only cold. As she walks, she catches a few words of the soldiers’ conversations, carried by the wind. They all speak Russian, a language she learned in her youth when she and her father left their native Lusatia for the far end of Poland. Her father had given her a copy of Luther’s _Small Catechism_ printed in the the language as a gift upon her mother’s death, and she had set herself to the task of learning it, equally due to both ambition and boredom.

“A pleasant town.” The remark comes from somewhere behind her, but she wouldn’t dare turn to face them. She analyzes the sound of his voice in her mind. Young, perhaps slightly older than her. Criticizing and sarcastic, even in the context of a genuine compliment.

“No, no, not pleasant. Such a simple term!” Another young voice, similar, but far more impressed. Soft, yet bold all at once. Her ears perk a little upon hearing him, his tone catching her curiosity all by itself.

“But it looks simple!” There it is: the inevitable criticism she had anticipated from the first man. She can hardly help but agree with him, however. Surely he has seen places far more glamorous than their dingy little town.

The second man makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a chuckle. “Not at all. Look around you. _C’est une ville charmante._ Full of gregarious people. The men are all handsome, and the women very pretty.”

The other man laughs at the final comment, while the girl’s focus falls upon the French phrase. She whirls around on her heel to face them.

“Excuse me?” The question comes before she can stop herself. Both men’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. 

“Do you need something, little girl?” The first man. He looks about as harsh as he sounds. The other raises a hand to silence his companion, and steps forward, closer to the girl.

“You speak French, sir?” she asks, maintaining eye contact with surprising ease. He is much taller, but something makes him less intimidating than the other soldiers. He seems almost kind. Or weak.

“ _Oui_ ,” he replies, with a smirk. He looks rather handsome, she notes, and it must be the thing making him so approachable.

“Teach me.” Her tone only sets him into a laugh, and she bites her lip, discouraged.

A few days later, to her pleasant surprise, he arrives at her home with a book tucked under his arm. He offers it to her, and she begins to flip through, squealing with delight as she sees the unfamiliar words spread on its pages.

“Would you like me to read it to you?” His voice is smooth, like silk. He cocks his head to the side, anticipating her response. Her affirmative answer comes almost immediately, without question. Of course she would, she thinks, her face breaking out into a pleased smile. The fascination she feels toward both the language and this man who knows it is something like a moth drawn to a flame. He is strange, and bright, and she feels he is from a different world. He comes almost every day, through the winter months. With her little knowledge of the French language, she dubs him _le prince charmant_. She tells her father of _le prince_ and his kindness, how he teaches her French in the afternoons when he can get away from his duties. It almost seems like a sacrifice he makes exclusively for her.

The night of the twenty-fourth of January, the girl invites her sweet prince to dine with them. The snow falls heavily on the frozen soil of the ground, building and building. _Le prince_ is on edge, glancing out the window every so often and tapping his foot anxiously.

“It’s cold. Perhaps you’ll stay the night?” He nods in reply, looking up at the girl with glistening eyes from his spot near the fire. The girl considers him for a moment before speaking again.

“Do you know of _Ptači kwas_?” The girl’s father looks up at her, alarmed at first, then softens, turning his face away to wipe mournful tears from his eyes. “The Upper Sorbian name for Birds’ Wedding,” the girl continues, her smile taking on a hint of nostalgia. “The children put plates on their windowsills, and the birds leave pastries in celebration of their wedding. We would celebrate it when I was younger, and we lived in Lusatia, back before my mother died.”

“It sounds silly.”

The girl tosses her head back, her laughter like tinkling bells: high-pitched, small, and sweet. “It is. Won’t you try?” She walks over to the creaking wooden cabinet in the kitchen, adjacent to the den, and retrieves a chipped plate. The patter of her bare feet on the wooden floor can hardly be heard over the soft howl of the wind outside. She passes the plate to _le Prince_ carefully, and his hands, she notes, are warm.

That night, she finds the door of his room left partially open, with just enough space for her to slip through unheard. On tiptoe, she hurries to the windowsill and places two pastries on the empty plate. As she starts on her way out, she hears the sleeping Adonis stir and freezes in her tracks, admiring him for a moment before fleeing on quick feet. He wakes a little later, a faint smile on his lips as he realizes what she has done.

The next day, the snow falls heavily again, and she asks _le prince_ to stay another night. Charmed by the carefree, lively little village girl, he finds it hard to refuse. “But,” he tells her in a whisper, a glint of amusement in his eyes, which she has been fooled to think means nothing but kindness, “tonight you ought to join me.” She shudders as a draft blows through the room, then nods, a faint smile tugging at her lips. 

It costs her nothing, she thinks, nothing at all, until her father finds them together the next morning.

She cries and pleads at his feet, a whirlwind of apologies spouting out all at once. Words she once studied twist in her mind to form her defense. She uses the words her father once encouraged her to learn in attempts to quell his anger. “God will forgive it, and so must you!” _Le prince charmant_ watches, unaffected, and she wants to cry out to him, too, for him to step in front of her and defend her, to explain that everything is fine. He knows, after all, his responsibility in the matter. His façade of indifference only disappears, however, when her father angrily insists they marry. The girl’s cries grow silent, and she sits back to watch and listen in horrified awe as _le prince_ tries to protest.

Three days later, they sign the marriage certificate. The girl watches as _le prince charmant_ writes out his true name, and she reads it for the first time, setting herself to the task of memorizing each letter.

Anatole Vasilyevich Kuragin. It plays in her mind like a song.

When he leaves her, she sees the strange glint in his eyes again, but his manner is not kind. It is cold, and unfeeling, and it makes his departure wound her twice as deeply.

“Won’t you come back for me?” She clings to his arm, her eyes brimming with tears too hard to shed.

He gives her no reply.

**Author's Note:**

> SOOOO clearly this has a lot of open (unfinished) symbolism but it takes influence from a few things i think i should point out so: The Picture of Dorian Gray (obviously, or perhaps not so obviously, i don't know how clear that reference was), Luther's Small Catechism (i had to have a doctrinal basis for some of the things this character said and since Lutheranism was (and still is) a popular denomination for German Sorbs i figured it would work), and uhhhhh actually that's it so anyway i hope you enjoyed this little thing i can finally say i finishedddddd
> 
> also the title wasn't planned i put the smiths on shuffle with the intention of naming the story after the first song to play and...yeah. which is scary because originally i was just going to call it le prince charmant fate freaking loves me y'all.


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